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October 10, 2010

October 10, 2010

Review

Part of a restaurant group that includes Moghul and Ming in Edison, Mehndi serves refined Indian food in an upscale setting. The food is very good, but nothing we tried stands out, especially compared to the intensely flavored Indian dishes we’ve enjoyed at lower-brow Jersey Indian restaurants. Morristown’s Mehndi seems to ratchet down the spice for its largely non-Indian clientele. The dining room is beautiful and the service solicitous, consistent with the high prices. The entrance, at the end of an office building hallway, is an awkward round room where one hostess station greets diners for both Mehndi and the attached pan-Asian Ming II. “Your restaurant this evening is behind door #2.” It feels like Epcot Center.

Mehndi, like Chengdu 46, demonstrates the unreliability of popular New Jersey restaurant rankings. Expensive ethnic food doesn’t mean New Jersey’s best ethnic food. Mehndi is the New Jersey Monthly2010 critics’ pick for best Indian restaurant in New Jersey and Zagat’s #2. Is it the small sample size that gives this place a high Zagat rating every year? More Jersey Indian food fans should make the trip south on 287 to Middlesex County to do some taste testing.